“Pop, it’s a different kind of ticket. The Bureau of Licenses issues pistol permits in two categories — premises and carry. You could probably get a premises permit if you wanted to stow a captured German Luger in your apartment or something like that, but that’s totally different from getting a permit to carry a concealed weapon on the streets.”
“Then what about all these gangsters who’ve got licenses to carry guns?”
“It’s a corrupt city, Pop, we all know that. If you’ve got ten or twelve thousand dollars to spare to grease certain people, you can get a concealed-pistol permit. It’s not fair but it’s the way things work. It’s an outrageous price, but the Mafia can afford it and it protects them from the inconvenience of being run in on a weapons charge. But I never heard of an ordinary law-abiding citizen willing to spend that kind of money on a gun. Even if you did, it would make them suspect you were some sort of criminal. They’d start bugging your apartment and your phone and you’d live your whole life under surveillance. Is that what you want?”
“All I want is the machinery to defend myself.”
“Have you thought of moving out of the city?”
“Have you?” he countered.
“God damn right I have. As soon as Carol’s on her feet we’re getting out of this hell-hole. I’ve already started reading the real estate ads. You ought to do the same thing, Pop.”
“No. I thought about it. I won’t do it.”
“Why?”
“I was born here. I’ve spent my whole life here. I tried living in the suburbs. It didn’t work. I’m too old to change, I know my limitations.”
“But things aren’t the same as they were then, Pop. It used to be a place where you could live.”
It was a bilious tone he had never heard from Jack before; but he shook his head. “I won’t run. I just won’t.”
“Why the hell not? What’s keeping you here?”
It was too hard to explain. He wasn’t going to allow himself to be driven from his home by a pack of savages who weren’t fit to wipe his shoes. But how did you say that aloud without making it sound like a corny line from an old cowboy movie?
What he said was, “Then you won’t help me get a gun permit?”
“I can’t, Pop. I haven’t got that kind of clout.”
“And I get the feeling from you that even if you did, you wouldn’t use it. You don’t approve of the whole idea.”
“No. I don’t. I don’t think adding to the arsenal on the streets is going to help calm things down any.”
“It’s too late to calm anything down,” he said. “It’s about time we revived our self-respect, don’t you think? Nobody should have to walk down a public street half-paralyzed by fear that somebody could come leaping out of any doorway with a switchblade knife. Human beings just shouldn’t have to live that way.”
“And you think having a loaded gun in your pocket would give you back your self-respect and make you feel ten feet tall. Is that it?”
Now who sounds like bad dialogue from an old movie? But he didn’t laugh; Jack had neither the imagination nor the sense of humor to appreciate it.
Jack said, “You’re kidding yourself, Pop. Have you ever even handled a pistol in your entire life?”
“I was in the Army.”
“All right, so you were in the Army. You were a clerk-typist, not a combat infantryman.”
“We still had to qualify on the range. I’ve handled guns.”
“Rifles. It’s hardly the same thing. A handgun’s a very tricky job to handle, Pop. People who don’t know them very well are always blowing holes in their own knees. And what happens if you’re accosted by another man with a gun? What happens when he sees your gun? Christ, you’d get your ass blown off.” Jack spread his hands and ducked his chin toward his chest. “Look, you’d better forget the whole idea. Guns aren’t panaceas, Pop. Bullets never answered any questions.”
“I don’t want to ask questions. I want to protect my life. What is it in this day and age that makes that simple desire so incredibly immoral and wrong?”
He gave in because Jack wasn’t going to; there wasn’t much point prolonging it. He knew all the arguments to which Jack would resort; he had used them all himself, in the past. And to keep pressing the point would make Jack suspicious that perhaps Paul had something more than self-defense in mind.
On the way home he asked himself exactly what he did have in mind.
Revenge, he thought. It lay curled in the back of his mind like a poison snake.
But it was a meaningless fantasy, really. The police had got nowhere; they would never get anywhere. Esther’s killers were free and there wasn’t a chance in the world of anyone’s ever finding them. Sooner or later they would be arrested for something, but it wasn’t likely this crime would ever be pinned on them. No one knew who they were and there was no way to find out. So it didn’t matter, that way, whether or not you went armed in the streets; you’d never have a chance to take a shot at them. You wouldn’t know them if you walked right into them.
Still, he had wanted a gun. Jack’s advice was simple to disregard, but he did know the facts; it was a keen disappointment to find out how impossible it was to obtain a pistol license.
It was dark when he came up out of the subway. The fear settled in his bowels again when he walked the single crosstown block to West End Avenue. No one accosted him, he reached the apartment without incident; but he was covered with oily sweat.
I just don’t want to feel like this, he thought. Is it so much to ask?
13
A phone rang, closer to the bed than it should have been. He blinked. The surroundings were unfamiliar and with momentary disorientation he rolled over, saw the phone and listened to it ring again. His arm reached it and tipped it off and he heard a weary female voice whine, “Seven-thirty, sir, you left a wake-up call.”
The motel. The Arizona heat just beyond the whispering air conditioner.
He ate breakfast quickly in the coffee shop and went back to the diagonally ruled parking slot in front of his room where the rent-a-car sat; the sun shot painful reflections off its chrome, the dry heat was already building toward another suffocating noon. He climbed in and started the car. The steering wheel had sun on it; its rim was almost too hot to touch. He switched on the air conditioner but the engine hadn’t smoothed out and it stalled. He cursed mildly and spent a while grinding the starter before it caught again.
He had always kept his driver’s license up even though he hadn’t owned a car in two decades nor driven one in several years. He still felt uncomfortable behind the wheel after nearly a week on these boulevards and freeways; it was a different style of driving out here, philosophically different from the kind of dodging and diving you got used to in city taxis. There was just as much aggression here but it was a high-speed kind and they came at you blinding fast from long distances away. Tucson had a main boulevard actually named Speedway; it had a green mall down the center, palm trees and lawn, several lanes on either side — the street itself was as wide as a New York city block and the drivers seemed to have cross-country racing in mind. Miles of it were lined with sportscar showrooms and speed shops and car-washes and gas stations. Everything glittered too much; even with sunglasses he had to squint.
Williamson had told him about the series of grisly murders. They were scared here too. No place was immune any more. You thought of muggings and murders as dark city things — as if wide boulevards and low rooftops and a brass desert sun would inhibit them — but the crime rate was alarming here too and Williamson carried a revolver in the glove-compartment of his Cadillac.